Runners: Red-Faced, Sweaty, Blurry, Message-Spreading Machines

Simon Elliott

17-May

Share this article

DESIGN

Even if you're not a runner yourself, you will not have missed the huge increase in organised running events in recent years. Nearly every decent-sized town or city now closes its roads for at least one day every year to allow for runners to take over.

From big city running events, like the London Marathon or Hong Kong Marathons, to charity 10Ks and fancy dress fun runs, everyone is pulling on their running vests and getting in on the action.

For those not content with simply pounding the tarmac, there are Tough Mudder assault courses, or hardcore triathlons and Iron Man contests. At the other end of the scale, there's even a booze run, and one English town recently held a 0.5K run complete with photos at the finish line, and a medal. Yes, participants actually got a prize for running half a kilometre!

The increased interest in running is good news for our running club customers who have seen their member numbers, and need for new running club vests, grow fast!

It's also good news for our corporate customers, local and international, who have a whole host of new events to spend their marketing budget on! And it's really fantastic news for you if you are a runner because you're now in demand as a speedy piece of marketing meat!

An essential piece of kit for any runner entering an official race is your running race vest or running race t-shirt. We offer cotton or dry-fit versions for both our running tees and running vests, but we definitely recommend our dry-fit.

As well as being packed with performance features, like sweat-wicking and heat regulation, the dri-fit fabric is perfect for printing bold, eye-catching designs.

Print Your Dry-Fit Running Vest BIG!

You have three target audiences to show your race vest or race t-shirt off to on race day: the spectators, the photographer's long lens, and your fellow runners.

The first two will be at some distance to you and any design on your custom running vest or running t-shirt should be easy to identify at a distance.

The other runners will be much closer, but as you'll both be moving, reading small text will be tricky.

So get your logos, your slogans, and even your name, printed up BIG!

Make Your Custom Running Vest Design Really Clear

Come race day you'll be so fast you'll be blurry, so any design that you want to use should be super clear to compensate.

There are a few tricks that designers use to make their designs clear:

Get rid of the clutter - if it's not useful, it's out. Anyone viewing your printed dryfit running t-shirt is going to have a very limited amount of time to process the information; don't make them hunt for the relevant parts.

If you're running for a charity, stick to their logo, possibly their tagline, and maybe a short web address with information about where they can donate to your cause.

Similarly, if you're designing custom corporate running t-shirts, stick with the logo and web address so that your space is maximised with an action. If the name of your company doesn't make it instantly obvious what you do, add some short, sharp keywords.

Font choice is SO important. Fonts are styled letters, capable of adding to your message, and also ruining it. Wrong font choice can turn off potential customers or supporters without them even knowing it. A neat trick, but one to avoid at all costs.

Just match your font to the vibe of your business and you'll be good. Try to avoid fine, scroll fonts; they're hard enough to read without them being on a moving target. And never use Comic Sans; it's universally hated and has the power to make even the most successful business look like a cowboy operation.

Colour is a powerful tool in making your design clear. It goes without saying that you shouldn't put white text on a white vest, for example. Choose a background colour that makes any logos or lettering pop off your custom running top!

And for the final note on clarity, make sure you've left enough room for your running number! It's all well and good having some fantastic design, but it will rather lose it's punch if half of it gets hidden behind your race number.

Your Custom Running T-Shirt Colours Have Permission To Clash!

As long as you've taken note of making anything important clear with your choice of colours, the rest is a free-for-all.

You don't have to win any elegance awards with your charity running t-shirt, or with your sponsored race vest, so feel free to choose colour combos you normally wouldn't step out of the house in. Clash away! The idea is to make you stand out in a crowd of competing runners and competing running vests.

With our interactive design tools, you can pick from a wide range of colours and patterns to add to a pre-designed template, on a range of running vest styles, including dryfit crop tops, dryfit racer back vests, and dryfit tanks vests.

And you can view your work as you go along, which makes the design process more accurate, fun, and addictive!

Get More Of A Good Thing - Order Extra Running Vests!

If you're trying to put together a running team to spread the message about your cause, charity, or company, a free dri-fit running vest is a legitimate lure!

And because we add runners names and numbers to our custom running vests FOR FREE, you can provide a personalised carrot to tempt even more of a crowd.

Runners need to train. And runners for outdoor runs need to rain outdoors. ALOT! This adds up to HOURS of exposure for your message if added to a special training kit or running training top - so make the most of it!

Share this article

GET IN TOUCH

Please enter your first name.

Please enter your surname.

Please enter a valid email address.

Please enter your phone.

UPLOAD FILE

Please enter a message.

Subscribe to newsletter

Thanks for getting in touch - a member of our team will be in touch shortly
(check your spam folder if you haven't received anything within 24 hours!)